Monkey Island Leads Adventure Game Revival

Classic LucasArts Series Returning With Major Facelift

Jul 1, 2009

After dominating the industry in the early '90s with its point-and-click adventure games, LucasArts is reintroducing one of its landmark titles for a new generation.

While they may seem quaint by today's gaming standards, there was a time not too long ago when point-and-click graphic adventures ruled the roost.

Featuring hand-painted 2D landscapes, character-driven storylines and mind-bending puzzles, the games of this genre proved over the years to be a great vehicle for some truly memorable characters.

In the late '80s to early '90s, LucasArts and now-defunct rival Sierra On-Line slugged it out yearly for the adventure gaming crown, producing beloved titles such as Sierra's King's Quest series, LucasArts' Sam & Max Hit the Road, and the Monkey Island games.

But adventure gaming's mass appeal hit the skids by the turn of the century when action-heavy first-person shooters, led by Id Software's Quake, altered the gaming landscape virtually overnight.

Despite this, LucasArts now seems intent on breathing some life into the long-dead genre. Banking on nostalgia and a faint hope that a new generation will catch on, the gaming giant is turning to a swashbuckling hero of yesteryear for help.

Originally released in 1990 for the PC, Ron Gilbert's The Secret of Monkey Island enthralled the gaming world with its hilarious dialogue, ingenious insult sword-fighting, and buffoonish pirate-wannabe hero Guybrush Threepwood.

To the delight of many old-school gamers, LucasArts will be releasing an enhanced remake of the beloved classic this year on Xbox Live Arcade and PC.

While all the jokes and puzzles will stay true to the original 16-bit classic, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition will feature high-res, stylized graphics that should appeal to current generation gamers. The overall look, however, will stay faithful to the original's 2D style, with all of the Caribbean-inspired locations and character art painstakingly recreated by hand.

In an effort to appease long-time fans, the special edition will also allow gamers to take a trek back in time by switching to the original 256-color version of the game with the press of a button.

There will also thankfully be a lot less on-screen reading going on as Guybrush's good-natured quips and ghost pirate LeChuck's menacing laughs come alive through voice acting for the first time in the game's history. The cast of 1997's The Curse of Monkey Island threequel will be lending their voices once again for this effort.

LucasArts is also implementing several other changes to the game to make it more accessible to current console-centric players.

Along with the aforementioned graphic overhaul, Monkey Island will boast a streamlined interface that will hide the obtrusive and somewhat intimidating verb command table and game inventory that was a staple in many of LucasArts' old graphic adventure titles.

This time, navigating Guybrush's actions (such as using an object or talking) will be more fluid with the help of several pre-set commands and a pop-up menu.

The developers have also added a hint system, which will ensure gamers never experience a hair-pulling moment when they encounter a frustrating puzzle - a problem that plagued many adventure games of yore.

More Classic LucasArts Adventure Revivals in the Offing?

The announcement of the re-release of Monkey Island is just the latest in a series of attempts to resuscitate interest in the point-and-click adventure genre.

Telltale Games, a developer founded by former LucasArts employees, has already been hard at work reviving another iconic adventure property, Sam & Max.

Episodic content that continues the zany adventures of the detective dog and his rabbity sidekick has been readily available for the PC and has just been released on the Xbox Live Arcade platform. The new games, which follow LucasArts' 1993 hit and feature 3D graphics updated for 21st century gaming, have received favorable critical reception from the gaming press.

Continuing the trend, Telltale Games will also be releasing all-new episodic adventures in July for the Monkey Island franchise with Tales of Monkey Island, a five-episode series that will continue the pratfalls of Guybrush Threepwood on the Nintendo Wii and PC.

Whether all of this will lead to other classic titles, such as Day of the Tentacle, making similar gaming comebacks remains to be seen. As LucasArts Community Manager Brooks Brown told WAToday in an interview, it all depends on how well today's gamers respond to the new takes on these old adventures.

"If this (Monkey Island) sells, there's no one at this company who doesn't want to do these games," Brown said. "It's a matter of showing that there's interest and this market is alive and get people as excited as possible about Monkey Island: Special Edition to show that these things can make it."

In other words, there is still hope yet for the rebirth of the graphic adventure.

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